The following nonsense transpired at a weird house show with Raw/Nerve and Cult Ritual in the northwest burbs on an uncomfortably warm summer night right by a casino that no one went to afterwards. Click on any photo to engorge it.

Discotek is going to release a long overdue North American version of Fist of the North Star (aka Hokuto no Ken) this May. Though they’ve done well with previous asian oddities (Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, Burst City), I’m holding my breath to see just how good or bad the quality of the release is. Having just recently watched a clean VHS copy of the English dub, I’m very aware that anything could be better than what original western audiences were subjected to years ago, but here’s hoping that the countless limb severing and head explosion scenes in this version cause my TV to bleed through my carpet.

For those who are in the unfortunate position of having never seen the feature-length film before, other than pleading with you to watch it, I don’t know what else to say to you besides, “This franchise is such a big deal that at one point, you could (can?) even get Hokuto no Ken instant ramen.” What started out as a comic written by a guy whose name sounds like a Japanese person saying “Bronson” made it’s way past the world of video games with the hopes of entering your stomach.

More images of manly, hyper-violent noodles can be found here. If you’re reading this long after this post has been made, you can check out Discotek’s news page for updates and availability.

All this month – and next month if you can believe it – the Gene Siskel Film Center is showing an astounding twenty films from extraordinarily influential Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. Unfortunately I dragged my heels on posting this, assuming that anyone who reads a&o probably wouldn’t watch any of these…though I suppose that was an unfair assumption on my part. Either way, whether you’re a cinephile or not, you should definitely watch as many of Oshima’s films as you can – especially in an incomparable theater setting like the Siskel Center. It’s very possible that you’ll never get a chance to some of these films (with English subtitles) ever again, and you certainly won’t get a chance to see so many of Oshima’s films at once.

All show times for the films listed below can be found at the Siskel Center site, or you can give them a call at 312-846-2600.

With the new year comes a new project by the fine folks of absurdandobscure.com; a site driven by completely unoriginal content not unlike what you would find at a&o. Rather than writing new content, the new site will be a constantly updated collection of content provided by others. It is my esteemed pleasure to introduce to the world…mind-rot.com.

I’m excited about the new project/site/portal to nonsense that will cover the work of innumerable scourges of the Earth at as rapid of a speed as possible. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be excited about it either, especially if you frequent this poor excuse for a blog/site/sounding board of relatively disreputable schlock/sheer awesomeness.

As of today, mind-rot.com is obviously still in the process of becoming completed, but the finishing touches aren’t far off. I’ve wanted to get this thing together for months, but because of reasons too boring to go into, both the new project and a&o had to suffer. I’m sure you pulled through these past couple of months though…just a wild guess from the 13,000 views that absurdandobscure.com received last year. Speaking of, I want to sincerely thank every single person that checked this site out last year. We’re hoping things will be significantly different this year, especially when it comes to digging into the depths of the worst acting caught on film, the best hardcore bands you keep ignoring for the dumbest reasons, brain melting foreign oddities and other indescribably engaging ephemera.

So be sure to check out both sites whenever you get the chance…you never know what absurd and/or obscure stuff might get the honor of being uncovered.

Trudging on to the latest installment of my attempting to pull out words/phrases/exclamations from a not-so-randomly selected installment of Daikaiju Battle Ultra Adventure, I present to you the following “useless” Japanese. I use the quotes, because honestly, if any of what you see below were truly useless, you’d never use any of it. Though, I can’t help but think that I’m going to have to talk about escaping, or even ultrasonic light waves…eventually (and quite possibly in the same sentence…hopefully?).

As I’ve tried to make resoundingly clear before, these translations are correct so far as I can tell, and the pronunciation for everything is written so that no prior knowledge of Japanese is required. Either way, giant monsters still rule and so does learning Japanese so that you can read comics about them.

what it means

how it’s pronounced

how it’s written

to suffer damage / to be deceived

yah-wah-ray-rew

やられる

ultrasonic light waves

cho-ohn-pah-koh-sen

超音波光線

Of course!

yap-pah-ree

やっぱり

attack (e.g. a signature move; a noun, not a verb)

koh-gek-key

攻撃

to say

“E”-ooh

言う

to consider

nahn-gah-“A”-rew

考えてる

concentration (not a verb; e.g. “to concentrate”)

shoe-chew

集中

or / or else

so-ray-toe-mo

それとも

systemic absorption

tie-nai-“Q”-shoe

体内吸収

to hit

ooh-tsu

打つ

to escape

knee-geh-rew

逃げる

to surpass

mah-sah-rew

勝る

Wow! / Awesome!

sue-goy

すごい!

to be exhausted

tsu-kah-ray-ha-tay-rew

疲れ果てる

gently

soh-toe

そっと

to creep up on

she-no-bee-yoh-rew

忍び寄る

friendship

you-koh

友好

Google Translate and rikaichan are at it again. To tell you the truth, at this point it doesn’t even matter to me whether or not anyone else finds their blatant errors amusing, but I’m still putting them up here regardless.

使(つか)う気(き)だ

came out as

Use (or) dental care (music).

尻尾攻撃(しっぽこうげき)

came out as

Tail attack (tail this pep talk)

わかえるんだ

came out as

Each frog I

くそっ

came out as

Baloney

そうだ ガンQも いたんだ！！

came out as

Q is also likely to get cancer!

Considering this post is the final blow in my look at Daikaiju Battle Ultra Adventure and goofy translations in general (at least for the time being), try not to sulk for weeks on end about it. Chances are there’ll be more soon. Until then…じゃあね.

It’s movies like this that I have to insist on everyone watching at least once; assuming that they’re somewhat in touch with stuff that doesn’t suck.

Before YouTube, before anything close to what people commonly refer to as viral videos, there were irredeemable pieces of shit being shown at theaters across the country for decades. Sure there were diamonds among the sludge, but so much of the rest of that schlock had nowhere near as much appeal as Heavy Metal Parking Lot; and it never even had a proper theatrical release! Heavy Metal Parking Lot as a concept isn’t really that extraordinary, but the results certainly are. Watch it Continue reading →

Quite possibly the “biggest deal” out of all the films being screened in the entire city of Chicago this month are part of a series entitled “Les Sixties” playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Film nerds would rightfully be quick to guess that the series covers films from the French film genre, La Nouvelle Vague (also known as the French New Wave). This series includes all of the following films: Contempt, The 400 Blows, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Jules and Jim, Le Doulos, Six In Paris, Last Year At Marienbad and Cleo From 5 to 7.

Other series playing this month at the Siskel Center cover world cinema in the ’30s, abject expressionism, Russian cinema (of which the infamous Battleship Potemkin is a part of) and a handful of Derek Jarman films.

There will be weeklong runs of Kagemusha (directed by Akira Kurosawa), Viva and Beautiful Losers (directed by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard). According to the Siskel Center, co-director Aaron Rose will be present for audience discussion, but only for two screenings.

In addition to all that, the Siskel Center will also be doing special, limited screenings of Hollywood Chinese and Johnny Dodgeball.